Almost 63M in US Watch World Cup Final

[Mark Jeffries]

And without the US team in the finals--almost 39M watching Fox in English and 24M watching Telemundo in Spanish (the all-time highest-rated Spanish-language telecasts)--Fox One and Peacock subscriptions also spiked during the tourney (Axios link if you hate their "Smart Brevity"):

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/21/world-cup-final-viewership-record

What was noted is that seemed that a good number of TEL's viewers were English speakers angry with the "hydration break" commercial breaks on Fox (TEL didn't go to commercials in the break, eventually Fox started doing split screens on those breaks) and preferring Andres Cantor's trademark "GOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!" to the motley crew of Fox announcers, which included the now-standard hot Brit blonde babe studio hosts (why didn't Fox have Erin Burnett working the Cup--was she taping "99 to Win" in the UK with Dr. Ken?).

[Bob F]

When Rebecca Lowe (one of the two best things about Fox's WC coverage, the other being of course Zlatan Ibrahimović, who calmly announced at the end that he will NOT join any other commentary/analysis teams in the game going forward) goes back to her "day" job at NBC's Premier League, she'll be watching plenty of familiar faces from this tournament from her perch in Stahmfuhd, CT...

Mark is half right... Erin Andrews is busy with Jeong on said game show (débuts in Sept), and then her concern turns to the football we Yanks are all too familiar with...

Erin Burnett would rather tell you there is only one important thing in your life right now (even if you're hardly American), and that's the elections in November.

B

Mark Jeffries, July 22nd:

[Bob F]

And it's "99 to Beat." You're thinking of my favorite election-prediction site, 270 to Win, which as of now believes (IYC) that both the House and Senate races are toss-ups.

B

[Tom Wolper]

The first half hydration break was a full commercial break and the second half break was split screen.

The star of the panel show was Thierry Henry. Unlike Zlatan, he’s been doing this for years so he’s prepared to fit a lot of explanation in a tight window. Zlatan and Lalas were fireworks but they didn’t really add anything to the game.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 8:24 AM 'Bob F' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

And it's "99 to Beat." You're thinking of my favorite election-prediction site, 270 to Win, which as of now believes (IYC) that both the House and Senate races are toss-ups.

B

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[Adam Bowie]

The massive Telemundo audience probably wasn't surprising given the Spain/Argentina final. Obviously I only watched the BBC/ITV coverage in the UK where matches alternated across both channels, with only the final being simulcast on each. The BBC always gets the bigger audience for this, in part because it's commercial-free. 9.7m on BBC1/iPlayer and 2.4m on ITV/ITVX. The peak BBC audience was 13.6m.

But in the US, the less-than enthusiastic coverage about Lalas and Zlatan would have 100% made me watch Telemundo in a language I don't speak rather than put up with buffoonery. I like Thierry Henry (I am an Arsenal fan after all), but I want decent analysis not shouty shouty rubbish.

I haven't seen any discussion about the half-time show. It did not go down well in the UK, with Wayne Rooney, the former player on the BBC's coverage giving his instant reaction afterwards as being: "I though it was crap." He then went on to say he liked the individual performers. 

Personally, I thought it was OK-ish. But it was wrongly placed and should have been a pre-grame show. Football matches only have breaks of 15 minutes, and not 27 because someone at FIFA thought it'd be a good idea. It's literally a law of the game like the size of goalposts or whatever. The Madonna part was fun, but clearly pre-recorded until the moment she emerged on the pitch, and someone would have had to let out some tracksuits quite a lot to fit the former players wearing them. The pre-recording also meant she was definitely lip-syncing. 

Gustavo Dudamel conducting his orchestra and some Muppets in Seven Nation Army was fun, but again, should have been at the beginning. Beiber was meh and was too slow for this kind of thing. BTS were fine, but the camera was too zoomed in the whole time. And Shakira and Burna Boy definitely brought the energy and were probably the best thing. I could have done without the Love song at the end with Coldplay quietly in the background. It was competently produced, but just in the wrong place. Aping the Superbowl halftime show is something FIFA should not be attempting. It should build it's own thing.

It's interesting to hear UEFA saying that they absolutely will not be doing something like that for the Champions' League final or the Euros final. But then, there is no love lost between UEFA and FIFA right now.

A bit like the Olympics, all broadcasters are required to take the Host Broadcast world feed, and that seems to come with a bunch of things I hate:

* A single cutaway to Gianni Infantino the president of FIFA in every game he attends.
* Cutaways to celebrities who the sports commentators around the world may or may not recognise.
* Hot female fans who at least one camera operator is always tasked with finding. I'm willing to bet that the average match at the men's World Cup is about 90% male, but they always find some very attractive women to show.
* And close-ups of children crying when their team is losing. I mean, why? It's just horrid. An adult fan disappointed? Sure. But leave kids out of it.

In general, I thought the tournament went well, and there was very little for the president to mess-up apart from rescinding a match ban for a red card which will, hopefully, haunt Infantino for years to come. 

It's good that it cut through in the US to a decent extent, but this is the best case from a timezone perspective. The next WC will be in Spain/Portugal/Morocco with a handful of games in South America. The timezones will not be as good. And the WC after than will be in Saudi Arabia ...for reasons. Matches will all take place in the morning and mid-afternoon EST. So all these discussions about who will buy the rights are interesting because while Fox got a bargain (FIFA recompensing them for holding the last WC in the winter in the middle of the NFL season), the next two iterations will be in US-audience unfriendly timezones, with the Saudi WC also clashing with the NFL because it'll have to be in the winter again.

Adam

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[Mark Jeffries]

While we've got you, Adam, did ITV run adverts during the hydration break?

And yeah, I believe "99 to Win" is the format title of that show, translated from either French or Flemish, since it's a Belgian format. And I'm surprised Fox kept the format title of "Nation's  Dumbest." Wouldn't they want to call it "America's Dumbest?"

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[John Edwards]

When I was in the UK during the start of the World Cup, I don't recall ITV running ads. I seem to recall it being mentioned that Ofcom rules strictly limited how much advertising they could have, with the effect being that ads during the hydration breaks would have meant fewer ads elsewhere during the broadcast, rather than the 6 new minutes to sell that Fox had.

TSN in Canada did run ads during the breaks.

John

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--

John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell

[Adam Bowie]

ITV would have been able to run ads during the hydration breaks, but they chose not to. They used it for some brief studio chat about tactics and sometimes tactics on a chalkboard from Emma Hayes, USWNT coach (she's a Brit).

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[John Edwards]

Right. I had forgotten about the chalkboard that launched a thousand memes.

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